Thursday, 19 February 2015

What the public thinks of 'public health'

As reported towards the end of last year, ComRes conducted a large opinion poll on behalf of the IEA, asking people about their attitude towards 'public health' policies. The findings make for very interesting reading and you can see them in full in a series of blog posts on the IEA lifestyle blog. Here's a very brief summary:

71 per cent of the British adults surveyed - and 81 per cent of
those who gave an opinion - believed that it should be the individual’s
responsibility to make their own lifestyle choices and that the
government should not interfere. This echoes the results of a 2013 Ipsos
MORI poll which found that only 30 per cent of British adults agreed
that ‘It is the government’s responsibility to influence people’s
behaviour to encourage healthy lifestyles’. This view
was largely reflected by respondents’ opposition to economic measures,
including taxes and incentives, being used to encourage healthy
lifestyles.

Of those who expressed an opinion, 69 per cent felt that indirect
taxes were too high and 59 per cent felt that pubs should be able to
accommodate smokers in a private room. Of the new ‘public health’
policies mentioned in the survey, only health warnings enjoyed majority
support, perhaps because they are not perceived to impinge on freedom or
impose a cost on consumers and taxpayers.

All in all, our survey found the British public to be generally
liberal (in the uncorrupted sense of the word) when it came to
individual lifestyle choices. They tend to prefer free choice rather
than government intervention, and there is little demand for new or
higher taxes on alcohol, tobacco, food and soft drinks.

About Me

Writer and researcher at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blogging in a personal capacity.
Author of Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism (2015), The Art of Suppression (2011), The Spirit Level Delusion (2010) and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (2009).

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."